Stop Getting Ready & Start Taking Action

Well, hey there and welcome back driven woman entrepreneur. Now, if you didn't catch the title for this hard-hitting no BS-ing solo episode, brace yourself because this one's called Stop Getting Ready and Start Taking Action. Now, unless this is your very first time as a listener to this podcast, I don't have to tell you that, I tell it like it is. And I try to do so to the best of my ability with love and compassion because I know exactly how it feels to be stuck in the endless cycle of getting ready but not actually moving the needle. You would think that this would be something that would only happen to beginners. That would only happen in the very first stages of starting your own business, but that's simply not so. As a matter of fact, most of the people that I work with as a consultant, coach, and business strategist are not beginners. And you might be surprised how many people with years, even decades of experience, can still get caught up in this trap. Now I'm gonna be dropping a lot of wisdom and knowledge and some tough love, so buckle up and let's do this.

Now, one of the things I wanna say first and foremost is I can't believe how many women have said to me, so I'm thinking about doing this certification program, or I'm thinking about earning this credential, or I'm thinking about going through this particular mastermind course, you know, high ticket coaching program, whatever, whatever usually because they're going to have some sort of credential at the end of it that they don't have now. And when I poke the bear on this topic and I ask them, so what is it exactly that you're hoping you'll get almost a hundred percent of the time, they tell me, well, I just know that if I go through ABC, XYZ, yada, yada, yada, I'm to be more confident about what I do and how I do it now. I'm always willing to be wrong but in my not so humble opinion, if you are not confident now about telling other people what you do, how you do it, what makes you different, and why they should consider working with you, there is no certification course coach, mastermind, or program of any kind that's going to make it so.

The reason for that is because all of those things are fundamentally passive. You may have noticed that even if you were that kid who got the perfect attendance award, and I was usually that kid myself, there is no participation trophy in business and nobody actually cares that you showed up to class. It just doesn't count anymore, and a lot of the women that I choose to work with are very smart, highly educated, recovering good girls. I'm talking about women like me and maybe you who did all the things and did them the right way. We were the A students, the perfectionists, the teacher’s pets, those who loved learning and probably have at least a couple of degrees under our belt. But there is no participation trophy or attendance award in it just doesn't matter.

Here's what you need to know, women business owners are first and foremost women, and because we're women, we have all been culturally conditioned to think that we're not enough to seek permission to compare ourselves unfavorably to others, to be excessively humble about the things that we do well or are naturally gifted at, to doubt our worth and value, to have a scarcity mindset and to believe that we genuinely need to plan and prepare, completely before we can take any sort of action. Ladies, I got news for you, we must flip the script. What I see over and over and over is that even if we tended to be kind of on the impulsive side, like I know I have been, it's not a flex when you go from not thinking enough. In other words, starting something on impulse to overthinking, not a flex.

Now, I am not saying you don't need a plan and that you don't need to plan. As a matter of fact, I strongly believe you do. But you probably don't need as rock solid, detailed, extremely comprehensive a plan as you might expect. In fact, you need just enough planning to get you into action, you simply do not need to have everything figured out before you can start. So that is the belief I'm calling BS on today because I see it holding so many bold, brilliant, and frankly badass women back from getting themselves out into the world, and if they're already out there, it's holding them back from succeeding at the level that they truly should be. So how do you know if this applies to you? Are you thinking, she's not talking to me, or, oh God, I know she's talking to me well, let's get specific.

What is getting ready beyond the point that you actually need to be look like, like it, it always amazed me. I lived in a sorority for a couple of years in college. I didn't make the decision to transfer from one school to another campus on time so by the time I got news that yes, you can go ahead and transfer, I couldn't get on campus housing. I couldn't find an apartment, so what did I do, I pledged a sorority. It actually wasn't a bad decision, but you know, living with 54 women who were all having their menstrual cycle at the same time, it's a bit much after a while. Anyway, it always fascinated me that there didn't really seem to be any correlation between the amount of time a particular woman would spend getting ready and how she looked at the end, like there were girls who would literally use all of the outlets in our communal bathroom. Most of the counter space had so many products and appliances, and yet they didn't look any different or better, I dare say, than somebody who was just kind of doing it on the fly.

So, I think the same thing applies in business you can spend days, weeks, months, years, getting ready to launch a program, write a book, start a podcast, change your business model, hire a team. I mean, you literally can take as much time to get ready as you decide you need. And this is really tricky because when you're a woman and you're culturally conditioned to think, I'm not enough are you really gonna be able to trust yourself to know when enough preparation and planning actually is enough? Which is why I think we need to have specific benchmarks, because to me, one of the most challenging things about being a woman, which means growing up under the influence of the patriarchy, is that we've lost to a large degree, our ability to trust ourselves. We have lost to a significant degree our ability to trust our own instincts and intuition. That applies to business too, right so let me give you some specific areas where you can objectively take a look and see hmm, I think I'm okay in this area, maybe that area, not so much, are you ready?

Okay, if you are spending a lot of time consuming other people's content and considerably less time creating your own, that is a sign. If you are spending a lot of time on stuff that doesn't move the needle, and by the way, I use the term move the needle quite a bit, if I haven't ever specifically spelled that one out for you. Moving the needle means generating leads, sales, revenue, profit, growth. If you are not doing those things, you are not moving the needle. Now you may be spending energy, effort, time, focus, money, all kinds of resources on things that don't move the needle and those things after the early stage will signs that you are spending too much time getting ready. Some of the areas that I see, especially early stage solopreneurs get caught up in spending an inordinate amount of time choosing their logo, fonts, brand colors, creating their brand board, that kind of stuff.

I mean, let's face it, that stuff is fun, am I right? It's so fun and rebranding is fun too, cuz after a while you get bored, right so you gotta shake things up. I mean, I literally have spent, I should say wasted let's be honest here. I have wasted hours upon hours, upon hours looking at different fonts and looking at different color combinations and tweaking my logo. And it's really, I mean, it's just, you're just playing with yourself, right because that doesn't move the needle, it really doesn't. It feels good. It feels like you are getting ready. It feels like you're planning, it feels like you're preparing. It feels like that stuff really matters, but feels don't make deals, okay? Feels do not contribute to your bottom line. They do not put anything in your wallet, your bank account. They are definitely not going to help you have any evidence for those uncomfortable conversations with your spouse or partner about why is it that you're spending so much time on this so-called business, but there isn't any money coming in so logo, brand color, brand, board fonts, that kind of stuff.

Here's another one, if you are working on your mindset, but not using your skillset, that is a big sign that you have been caught in the getting ready cycle. Consuming too many podcasts, too many blogs, too much social media because you think you need to learn things like, listen, nobody loves learning more than me, trust me. And if you are a person who refers to yourself as a lifelong learner, hear me when I tell you, you are especially prone to getting caught up in an endless, or at least excessive cycle of getting ready because it's super satisfying to you to learn, and there's an endless amount of stuff to learn, and it's constantly increasing. I mean, literally as soon as you learn one thing, a new alternative to that thing is gonna come out, and then you're gonna wanna learn that, trust me, I know. So if you're consuming too much information and not taking action with it, that's a sign.

In general, being a follower instead of a leader now, you may not think of yourself as a leader, but I promise you, if you are a coach, consultant, independent, professional, service-based business, you are a leader to your potential clients, you need to be. So if you need to work on believing that you are a leader, don't just work on your mindset. Don't just say mantras to yourself. I'm a leader. I'm a leader. I'm a leader. You're gonna feel like you're a leader. You're gonna start believing that you're a leader. You're gonna start identifying as a leader when you lead, which is action. Being an observer instead of a participant, imagine that you're kind of in the bleachers watching the action on the court, you need to be on the fricking court. And also, listen, I've said this before, I'll continue to say it. I don't disparage the woowoo, I just don't really identify with it. I don't really get it. I don't really resonate with it. It doesn't really make sense to me. I'm kind of low-key, skeptical about it, a little cynical at times but I do understand that there is value from a quantum physics perspective.

So if you're into the manifesting and you wanna do manifesting mantras, you wanna have a vision board, that's cool. That's totally cool, and there are people who think that is the absolute shit, but you gotta couple it with making offers to potential clients, or you do not have a business, or at least not one that's acting like a business yet, you are stuck in the getting ready cycle. Now, to be clear, I am not talking about quote unquote massive action. I am not talking about, yeah, show the universe who's boss. I am not talking about 10 xing, whatever. I am not talking about this party line that says, by investing money in a coaching program, when you are not making any money in your business and calling that a lever, that's going to unblock the universe and it's gonna start dropping coin in your lap like you're sitting in front of a dollar slots in Vegas. Hell no, I'm not talking about that.

When I talk about taking action, and I'm gonna tell you in a few minutes about what specific actions I think you should take, I'm not talking about this bro idea of massive action. I really get very itchy when I hear that term because I know it’s hype, it’s hack and it's someone else's marketing shtick that lures a lot of people in, relieves them of quite a few of their dollars and most of the time they got absolutely nothing but shame at the end. So a couple more uncomfortable truths before we get into actionable ideas. Still with me okay, snuggle up to that seatbelt and the shoulder harness, here's some more uncomfortable truths. This is something I had to learn the hard way, by the way, and it took longer than it should have because as women, we are culturally conditioned to think we're not enough. We tend to overdeliver in our business and we tend to over-deliver while undercharging so many of us end up not with a business, but with a job and one that is actually paying us less per hour than we were making when someone else was signing our checks. Not to mention the fact there's no benefits or paid time off or any of that.

So if you are overdelivering and undercharging, the uncomfortable truth I wanna share with you today is this, your clients do not need to be impressed with you. They need to be impressed with themselves and what they can accomplish with your support. I didn't get this myself for a while, I literally over-delivered to the point where I taught my clients so much that they then either had to take the next six months off from their business to implement everything I taught them, or had to literally take a vacation because they were freaking exhausted. That all comes a good place of wanting to share, wanting to give people all that you've got. There may be a bit of believing that you have to overdeliver to actually be good enough and the truth is, it doesn't matter how impressed your clients are with you. They may think you are the absolute bomb.com, but if you are not actually helping them take action while taking action yourself, you're really not helping them in the best way that you could be and this has been true for me as well.

Have you ever heard it said you can't edit a blank page? I think this is one of the things that's so helpful to remember when we realize, okay, I've done enough thinking, I've done enough getting ready, I've done if the prepping and planning and printing and prepping and all of this, and now I need to do, you can't edit a blank page. You can't fix anything unless you have already created it and more importantly, shared it with someone, you simply won't have enough information to know whether it's gonna work or not. The reality is, there's only so much clarity we can achieve from thinking and planning, preparing, getting ready, they're all forms of thinking. Here's another one because like you probably, I'm a lifelong learner and I love learning more than just about anything.

Probably what I like almost as much as learning is sharing what I've learned, but unless you are a reference librarian or some kind of investigative journalist, research is absolutely going to become a rabbit. And if you like learning as much as I do, and you're in this idea that, well, I wanna be really ready when I pull the trigger, whether it's to start the business or to launch the new program in your established business, research will absolutely become a rabbit hole because there's no shortage of information out there. And the more sites you visit, the more times you click, you're literally like leapfrogging from one information source to another, to another, to another. You can forage information to your heart's content. You can lose sleep, you can forget to eat. You can just about forget to go to the bathroom because it's very stimulating and exciting, but it does not move the needle.

In fact, in my experience with most of my gifted clients, they eventually talk themselves out of doing anything because your idea becomes so complicated, so top heavy, so cumbersome that you're just exhausted even thinking about turning it into something. I know that right around the time that you realize I've made this little thing into a big thing and it still didn't feel big enough, so I made it even bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Now I don't wanna do it anymore, I get it. That is absolutely evidence that you need to start taking action, and I'm gonna tell you exactly what you can do with a two big idea in just a moment or two. Here's the thing, my friend, you do not need another course, another coach, another certification if you haven't taken action on the ones you've invested in already. This is not to shame you, this is not to criticize you. This is not to call you out because I probably have a dozen undigested or unopened courses on my laptop.

When I say undigested, I didn't eat the whole thing or I ate the whole thing and it just sat there in my belly kind of rotting because I never did anything with it. And I know it's probably the same for you, so stop believing you will feel more comfortable marketing your services if you have more credentials. This is a fallacy. It is wishful thinking and if you need to hear me say more on the topic, have a listen to episode 121, which I called the cure for imposter syndrome. And by the way, if you are a genuine expert, as opposed to the pseudo experts that are literally crawling all over the innerweb saying, look at me, look at me, look at me. I mean, if you are a genuine expert, you know your shit. You've invested years, maybe decades in developing your expertise, your wisdom, your experience. I know how hard it is for you in particular because you've spent so much time developing your knowledge base, your wisdom, your body of work, that what online business requires of you to limit yourself to niche down, if you will, to decide on one specific content focus area, one problem to create one framework can absolutely feel excruciating because of course you're an expert, so you literally wanna put everything and the kitchen sink in it, and you can't, trust me, I've tried so hard.

And all that overthinking and over complicating isn't gonna help you. As a matter of fact, one of the an uncomfortable truth I have learned is that if you really wanna help people, if you really, really want to help people, you need to give them less, less not more, unburden it uncomplicated, streamline it, simplify it. And I'm not saying dumb it down cuz I don't work with dummies and I bet you don't either, but you need to give them less information and more implementation. It's kind of a parallel process because as your thinking less, planning less, learning less, researching less, listening to other people's stuff, less including me. Then it creates space and time and frees up energy for you to implement, for you to take more action, and that is exactly what you need to be doing with your clients. So I'm going to be back right after this quick message with actionable ideas, stay with me.

Okay, are you ready for those actionable ideas I promised, here they are. One, if you are prone to overthinking, if you are prone to spinning your wheels over-planning, over preparing, set a time limit. Set a time limit, and take action and remember, your first step doesn't have to be a big one. But it's very challenging for many of us to go from thinking to doing so uncomplicate it, set a time limit, how much time does this idea need to be fleshed out to a minimum viable size and then take action, take the first step. Here's the mindset, you need to be able to do this and not resent it, because a lot of people are like, I don't know how long it's gonna take. Hey, listen, I got news for you, it's going to take exactly as much time as you allocate it. If you give it an hour that's how much time it will take. If you give it a week, that's how much time it will take, and most ideas, most plans, most preparation does not actually get better with time, it gets better with experience.

Experience is what we get from getting ourselves out of only thinking and getting ourselves more quickly into doing. So mindset is commit to creating the minimum viable product, whether it's a product, a program, a service, an offer. What is the smallest thing that I can create and then offer it to the minimum viable audience or target market. Now, this is not just for beginners because again, most of the people I work with are experienced. They have been in business for at least a few years so this is for everyone because we all get ideas to offer new things to new audiences. We all do, or could be, I think should be, so what is the smallest thing that you could create and what is the smallest group of people that you could put it in front of? Do that and then you can test and tweak but here's the thing, now I had a previous career in the medical sales industry and initially it was pharmaceuticals and then I moved on to medical devices and so forth.

But something I learned way back when I was selling pharmaceutical, was, if you're going to change something, only change one variable. If you decide, oh, if I'm taking this medication or I'm doing this type of therapy or this type of treatment and I'm doing it once a week, what'll happen if I do it three times a week oh, and in addition to that, I'm gonna try a new medication, I'm gonna see a new doctor, I'm gonna, no, no, no. Because then you have no idea what's helping. If you're doing too many things at once with a minimum viable offer to a minimum viable audience, you can change one thing about it and then you can test it and if it doesn't produce the desired results, you can make a different change and test it. That's how we avoid spending an enormous and inordinate amount of time and energy creating something that doesn't sell. We start small and we put it in front of somebody, and if it doesn't sell, make a small change, try again.

Here's a few more actionable items for how to get out of thinking and into doing more readily. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of spending time in the right rooms. First of all, let me define a room, a room might be a Facebook group, a room might be on a discord server, a room might be a membership, a room might be a mastermind, a room might be there's all kinds of rooms and, and actually there are literal physical rooms too. Now that the Covid pandemic has wound down, and more of us are going out and about in our respective communities, I think it is very wise and very valuable to mix it up between in-person and online groups. Now, I understand a lot of people are hardcore introverts, but I also believe that two and a half years of quarantine have done nothing to help any of our social skills and I'm talking to the extroverts too. I am a hardcore extrovert who has gotten far too comfortable being inside my house 24/7.

So, I think it's really wise and really valuable because if you are self-employed, you are in marketing, in sales, whether you like it or not. So getting into the right rooms, both physical rooms and online rooms is really, really important. What most new business owners tend to do is only hang around with other new business owners. Now, when you're absolutely just getting started there's nothing wrong with that cuz honestly, that's probably the only room that you are going to feel comfortable in and you're still gonna be scared shitless. But once you've made your first few sales, once you literally are no longer fantasizing about looking for a job. Once you are committed to your business, I strongly recommend that you spending time in rooms, virtual and physical, where there is a mix of more advanced beginners and intermediates. Because the hard truth is if you hang around other beginners too long, you'll remain one for far too long.

Here's another unexpected truth that I'm a little surprised at myself that I'm offering, but like you, I continue to learn, I continue to grow, I continue to shake it up in my business and try new things. So unless you are really triggered by being around men or have, you know, PTSDs, safety issues, whatever you just do not feel at all comfortable being in the company of men, I would suggest that you consider joining some mixed gender groups. I think most female business owners tend to surround themselves with other female business owners, and while there is wonderful, wonderful community connection, communication, collaboration in those rooms, what's also true is that men have different social condition. And they have received different messages than we have about risk, about failure and about success. They have different beliefs about money because they have different experiences going all the way back to when they were little boys.

So I called this podcast The Driven Woman Entrepreneur, I market exclusively to women, but I'm also realizing that I have something to learn from networking with, collaborating with, and even working with men. Some of my learnings in the last few years have come through men because they simply ask different questions and think different thoughts based on their different conditioning. I don't think of this as selling out. I think of this as taking advantage of and leveraging different mindsets, different skill sets and different areas of expertise.